Flamenco Soul

We don’t really understand why he does what he does – Hermes is an enigma. His personality irritates us, yet there is something about him that captivates us. How does he enchant us? What is at the heart of the magic that this taboo-breaking, charming and arrogant trickster casts on us?

The idea for The Nutcracker ballet came from theone-time director of the Tsarist theatre who, based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s fairy tale entitled the Nutcracker and the Mouse King, wanted to stage a fairy tale ballet that would surpass all that had gone before, both in sound and in spectacle. Tchaikovsky was asked to compose the music and after Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty his third and final ballet was also a great success. It was the six-movement suite of the music of The Nutcracker that was first performed in March 1892, and in December of the same year the spectacularly presented theatrical work was also performed. The Nutcracker has become the most frequently played ballet piece of all time.

The evoked era in the performance coincides with the time of the original premiere of Swan Lake. At the same time the second half of the 19th century was also a period known for the spreading of mental hospitals; patients 'possessed' by animal spirits and treatments of mental illnesses by torture and other bizarre methods.